Jewish Holocaust Commemoration Activity in the ... - Yad Vashem

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and charged with assisting the “Illegal” Immigration to Palestine. This wasenough to strike the matter from the agenda.However, at the initiative of Rabbi Hayyim Davidovich Kleiper, who had cometo Tarnopol from L’viv, all the Jews in the town were canvassed for donations,and a monument was installed at the grave of the Holocaust victims, with thefollowing inscription in Yiddish and Russian: “In eternal memory and honor ofthe Jews who were murdered by the German Fascists.” The unveiling, held inOctober 1946, was attended by municipal officials, and the secretary of theCommunist Party in that city delivered a speech. 34The town of Shepetovka, in Kamenets-Podol’skiy Oblast, had a Jewishpopulation of about 20,000 before the war, approximately 20 percent of thetotal population. The Nazis murdered most of these Jews, and some of thesurvivors had left for Poland. The few remaining Jews in Shepetovka wereunable to put up a monument. However, according to a report in 1946: “Thebelieving [religious] Jews … put the common graves in good order.… [In theplace where] the Germans shot 26,000 people - Jews and members of othernationalities - soil has been heaped over the pits and a metal fence has beenbuilt around the area.” 35In Chernevtsy (Czernowitz), where several communities existed after the warand competed with each other in various respects, an attempt was made toestablish a monument to the Holocaust victims - a project around which thecommunities united. In 1945-1946, most of the Jews of Chernevtsy left forRomania and were replaced by Jews from other parts of the Soviet Union.After the community stabilized somewhat, the newly arrived Jews began todeal with the construction of a monument to the victims of the Holocaust. Theycontacted the CARC representative and asked him for permission to build amonument at the place where Jews had been murdered in 1941, and, for thispurpose, to conduct a special fundraising campaign among the townspeople.In July 1948, in view of the vagueness that surrounded this matter, the CARC34 Report of the CARC in the Ukraine for the fourth quarter of 1946, TsGAOOU, RG 1, List 23,File 4556, pp. 61–62; Report on Jewish Religious Activity in the Ukraine, July 25, 1947, ibid.,p. 132; Brief Survey on the Jewish Religion, Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii,RG R–6991, List 3s, File 61, p. 160. See also Pinkas Hakehillot: Encyclopaedia of the JewishCommunities, Poland—Eastern Galicia (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1980), p. 251.35 Report on the condition of cemeteries in Kamenets-Podol’skiy Oblast, November 1946,TsGAVOU, RG 4648, List 2, File 14, p. 20.__________________________________________________________________________12/22Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies
epresentative in the oblast contacted his superior in Kiev. He replied that,since the persons murdered there had been Soviet citizens, “the question ofbuilding a monument is of concern to the entire population of Chernevtsy” andnot a particularistic Jewish cause. Furthermore, “Fundraising in synagoguesfor the construction of a monument should be totally prohibited.” 36An initiative by the community in Priluki, in the Chernigov Oblast, received asimilar official response. The community there officially asked the municipalauthorities for permission to hold a day of fundraising (kruzhochnyi sbor), incoordination with the authorities, to build a monument for persons murdered inthe Holocaust, to conduct a mass unveiling ceremony, and to advertise theceremony in the local press. The municipal bureaucrats, not knowing how torelate to this request or wishing to avoid making a decision, asked forinstructions from Kiev. They received the following reply:The stationing of monuments at the graves of victims of GermanFascism is the concern of the municipality and not of the religiouscommunity. The municipality may involve all citizens [emphasis in theoriginal] in this activity.... The kehillah should not engage in theconstruction of monuments. 37An initiative by the few Jews in the town of Shchors (formerly Snovsk), in theChernigov Oblast, was more successful. Shortly before World War II, therehad been 1,500 Jews in Shchors, 15 percent of the population. Although onlya few of them returned to the town after the war, they seem to have managedto put up a monument to the Holocaust victims during those years. In hismemoirs, the Jewish-Russian author Anatolii Rybakov describes how they didit:[One of the few survivors] circulated with other old men in thecourtyards, in desolate and neglected places, on the roads, in theforests, and in the fields, and gathered in sacks the remains of the36 Letter from CARC representative in the Ukraine to his representative in Chernevtsy Oblast,September 13, 1948, ibid., File 50, p. 199.37 Ibid., File 116, pp. 93–94, and Report of the CARC in the Ukraine for the Fourth Quarter of1946, TsGAOOU, RG 1, List 23, File 4556, p. 61.__________________________________________________________________________13/22Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies
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Jewish Holocaust Commemoration Activity in the ... - Yad Vashem

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